Barreal

After Mendoza we headed north to the San Juan province.  After arriving at the bus station in San Juan capital and surveying our options, we decided to head to Barreal in the southwestern corner of the province.  The town of Barreal is a green oasis in the midst of rocky, mountainous desert.  The town is dotted with small orchards and alfalfa fields, however oddly enough there is no vegetation on the banks of the river Pato nearby.  It gives the impression that the land would be inhospitable even with the presence of water.

A half hours drive south of town there is a big dried mudflat, similar to the blackrock desert, called the pampas of El Leoncito.  El Leoncito is the name of the nature reserve.  On the pampas we tried out auto-velismo, which is basically a motorless go-cart with a sail attached.  The wind that day was pretty light, but there were a few good gusts to give us a taste of what riding in a wind-powered car is like. 

After enjoying the pampas for a few hours we packed up the wind-car and drove up into the mountains to one of the two observatories in Parque El Leoncito.  The observatory that we toured specializes in asteroids.  Apparently there is a doozy headed on a collision course with Earth some 900 years from now.  Although we didn't get to look through the giant telescope, we did get to look through a very powerful portable telescope.  One of the docents set up the telescope and showed us around 14 stellar objects.  One of the reasons why the observatory was built in this far corner of argentina is that it averages around 320 clear nights per year.  The night we were there was one of those clear nights, and moonless to boot.  So many stars were visible that I couldn't distinguish the milky way. 

Here are our pictures!